Editing George Washington Carver (section)

==Life while famous==
[[File:George Washington Carver-crop.jpg|right|thumb|A United States [[Farm Security Administration]] portrait, March 1942]]
[[File:George Washington Carver-peanut specimen.jpeg|right|thumb|200px|A peanut specimen collected by Carver]]

During the last two decades of his life, Carver seemed to enjoy his celebrity status. He was often on the road promoting [[Tuskegee University]], [[peanut]]s, sweet potatoes, and racial harmony. Although he only published six agricultural bulletins after 1922, he published articles in peanut industry journals and wrote a syndicated newspaper column, "Professor Carver's Advice". Business leaders came to seek his help, and he often responded with free advice. Three American presidents—[[Theodore Roosevelt]], [[Calvin Coolidge]] and [[Franklin Roosevelt]]—met with him, and the [[Crown Prince]] of [[Sweden]] studied with him for three weeks. From 1923 to 1933, Carver toured white Southern colleges for the [[Commission on Interracial Cooperation]].<ref name="Special_History_Study" />

With his increasing notability, Carver became the subject of biographies and articles. Raleigh H. Merritt contacted him for his biography published in 1929. Merritt wrote:

<blockquote>At present not a great deal has been done to utilize Dr. Carver's discoveries commercially. He says that he is merely scratching the surface of scientific investigations of the possibilities of the peanut and other Southern products.<ref name="merritt">Raleigh Howard Merritt. [http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/merritt/merritt.html ''From Captivity to Fame or The Life of George Washington Carver''.<!-- Bot generated title -->] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070211131001/http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/merritt/merritt.html |date=2007-02-11}}</ref></blockquote>

In 1932, the writer James Saxon Childers wrote that Carver and his peanut products were almost solely responsible for the rise in U.S. peanut production after the [[boll weevil]] devastated the American cotton crop beginning about 1892. His article, "A Boy Who Was Traded for a Horse" (1932), in ''[[The American Magazine]]'', and its 1937 reprint in ''[[Reader's Digest]]'', contributed to this myth about Carver's influence. Other popular media tended to exaggerate Carver's impact on the peanut industry.<ref>{{cite magazine
|title=Peanut Man
|date=June 14, 1937
|magazine=Time
|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,757923-1,00.html
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930041946/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,757923-1,00.html
|url-status=dead
|archive-date=September 30, 2007
|access-date=August 10, 2008
}}</ref>

From 1933 to 1935, Carver worked to develop peanut oil massages to treat infantile paralysis ([[polio]]).<ref name="Special_History_Study" /> Ultimately, researchers found that the massages, not the peanut oil, provided the benefits of maintaining some mobility to paralyzed limbs.

From 1935 to 1937, Carver participated in the USDA Disease Survey. Carver had specialized in plant diseases and mycology for his master's degree.

In 1937, Carver attended two [[chemurgy]] conferences, an emerging field in the 1930s, during the [[Great Depression]] and the [[Dust Bowl]], concerned with developing new products from crops.<ref name="Special_History_Study" /> He was invited by [[Henry Ford]] to speak at the conference held in [[Dearborn, Michigan]], and they developed a friendship. That year Carver's health declined, and Ford later installed an elevator at the Tuskegee dormitory where Carver lived, so that the elderly man would not have to climb stairs.<ref name="time_article1"/><ref name="edwards">Linda McMurry Edwards, [https://books.google.com/books?id=DYAl4rJpewoC ''George Washington Carver: The Life of the Great American Agriculturist''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160429230718/https://books.google.com/books?id=DYAl4rJpewoC&source=gbs_navlinks_s |date=April 29, 2016}}, Rosen Publishing Group, 2004, pp. 90–92. Retrieved July 7, 2011.</ref>

Carver had been frugal in his life, and in his seventies he established a legacy by creating a museum of his work, as well as the George Washington Carver Foundation at Tuskegee in 1938 to continue agricultural research. He donated nearly {{US$|60000|1938}} in his savings to create the foundation.<ref name="edwards"/>

Carver headed the modern organic movement in the southern agricultural system.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Hersey|first=Mark|date=April 1, 2006|title=Hints and Suggestions to Farmers: George Washington Carver and Rural Conservation in the South|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/envhis/11.2.239|journal=Environmental History|volume=11|issue=2|pages=239–268|doi=10.1093/envhis/11.2.239|issn=1084-5453|access-date=November 29, 2021|archive-date=March 11, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220311031505/https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1093/envhis/11.2.239|url-status=live}}</ref> Carver's background for his interest in organic farming sprouted from his father being killed during the Civil War, and when his mother was kidnapped by Confederate slave raiders. Now an orphan, Carver found comfort in botany when he was just 11 years old in Kansas. Carver learned about herbal medicine, natural pesticides, and natural fertilizers that yielded plentiful crops from his caretaker. When crops and house plants were dying, he would use his knowledge and go and nurse them back to health. As a teenager, he was termed the "plant doctor".

When his study about infection in soybean reached Booker T. Washington, he invited him to come and teach at the Tuskegee Agricultural school.

Although the emancipation allowed Black families [[40 acres and a mule]], President Johnson revoked this and gave the land to white plantation owners instead. This prompted Black farmers to exchange what was once their land, and in turn, a small part of the land's harvest. This led to sharecropping.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Coxe.|first=Toogood, Anna|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/5006777|title=George Washington Carver National Monument, Diamond, Missouri : historic resource study and administrative history|date=1973|publisher=Denver Service Center, Historic Preservation Team, National Park Service|oclc=5006777|access-date=November 29, 2021|archive-date=March 11, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220311031459/https://www.worldcat.org/title/george-washington-carver-national-monument-diamond-missouri-historic-resource-study-and-administrative-history/oclc/5006777|url-status=live}}</ref> Carver soon realized that farmers were not obtaining enough food to survive, and how the industrialization of cotton had contaminated the soil.<ref name="Wedin">{{Citation|last=Wedin|first=Carolyn|title=Carver, George Washington|date=February 9, 2009|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.45361|work=African American Studies Center|publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.45361|isbn=978-0-19-530173-1|access-date=November 29, 2021|archive-date=March 11, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220311031445/https://oxfordaasc.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195301731.001.0001/acref-9780195301731-e-45361|url-status=live}}</ref>

Carver wanted to find a way to organically transform Alabama's failing soil. He found that alternating nitrogen-rich crops would let the soil get back to its natural state. Keeping crops like sweet potatoes, peanuts, and cowpeas would produce more food surplus and different types of food for farmers. Carver worked to pioneer organic fertilizers like swamp muck and compost for the farmers to use. These fertilizers were more sustainable to the planet and helped farmers to spend less money on fertilizers since they were recycling products.<ref name="Wedin"/>

Carver pushed for woodland preservation, to help improve the quality of the topsoil. He urged farmers to feed their hogs acorns. The acorns contained natural pesticides and feeding them acorns was cheaper for the farms too.<ref>{{Cite book|last=D.|first=Hersey, Mark|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/734062445|title=My work is that of conservation : an environmental biography of George Washington Carver|date=2011|publisher=Univ. of Georgia Press|isbn=978-0-8203-3088-4|oclc=734062445|access-date=November 29, 2021|archive-date=March 11, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220311031444/https://www.worldcat.org/title/my-work-is-that-of-conservation-an-environmental-biography-of-george-washington-carver/oclc/734062445|url-status=live}}</ref> Carver's efforts towards the holistic and organic approach are still in practice today. In his research, Carver discovered Permaculture. Permaculture could be used to produce carbon from the atmosphere, produce a higher quantity of crops, and let crops flourish despite global warming.